Non-tesla infra has gotten a lot better over the past couple years, at least according to this one YouTube EV road trip I watched recently: https://youtu.be/ouPiwt5hxXQ
My team was working with 2 non-tesla charging vendors this summer. Terrible, couldn't get them to work, waiting weeks for the vendors to fix their shit, no support, no documentation (seriously). It was like a college intern who went through a bootcamp tried to throw one together. Wouldn't trust them to make a USB charger.
It’s still not great. I drove I5 North for the holidays and at one stop there was an hour+ long wait at Electrify America. Only 3/4 stalls working and a queue 5 or 6 deep to charge. At the same stop there were 12+ Tesla chargers and no issue with wait and not fully occupied
I don't have an electric car (not against it in principle but waiting for the right time).
One thing that always bothers me is that, from what I've seen, queuing for charging seems to be based on coordination and trust between EV drivers. Surely it would make far more sense to have some kind of virtual queuing system built in. Then when a charger becomes free it automatically sends you an alert and gives you some period to connect to the charger.
Longer term, I would hope charging stations would be designed with a layout which lets cars queue sensibly.
queuing for charging seems to be based on coordination and trust between EV drivers.
You are correct, which is why I’m serious when I say that I’m surprised there haven’t been reports of physical altercations by now. And even if not fisticuffs, how about saving me the stress of trying to figure out the ad hoc queuing system? The chargers are often way the hell out at the edge of the parking lot, no one is losing usable parking spots by making a few painted lanes.
While it might make sense to soft lock a stall for queue, that'd be pretty hard to coordinate and wouldn't work well cross manufacturer (you now either need a universal registration protocol or some sort of physical infrastructure that enforces a queue).
IMO, the better solution and the one that seems to be happening is more chargers. These charge providers have the numbers on how many people are using their stations so it's not really impossible to map out and plan out where new charging stations are needed.
During surge usage, Tesla is deploying temporary charge stations to handle the extra load [1]
I suggested the same queueing system like a year ago, haven't heard of anyone implementing it. Even companies doing managed charging, they are in much more of a rush to sign a contract than make it work well.
You can tell nobody thought it through, just pushing all the chargers up against the borders of properties because that's what requires the least construction and least coordination with property owners. Customers get the shaft.
I'm curious if there's a reason why or how Tesla tend to build 10+ stations per location while EA/EVgo tend to only do 4 most of the time. I still need to wait a lot of times at EA/EVgo locations.